THIS question is suggested by several considerations. In the first place, we must remember that the great majority of the remedies we use (certainly those we use most constantly) were proved about a hundred years ago, when conditions of life were very different from those that obtain today. Not only were the circumstances in which the people worked different, but the very work was of a different nature, indeed many of the occupations of the present day, and those highly arduous and exacting, did not then exist.
There was nothing approaching the stress and strain of modern civilisation, with its vastly increased wear and tear of the nervous system and its overwork of vital organs.
Again, food was probably purer in the days of Hahnemann and Hering. Certainly there were not the timid and adulterated foods with which modern mans digestive organs have to contend.
All the above-mentioned different factors have almost certainly influenced the manner of response of civilised peoples to both diseases and drugs. So, then, the symptoms evoked under the influence of different diseases and produced by provings of remedies will be different now from what they were at the time of the original provings.
Another point is that a hundred years ago there existed but few of the precise instruments of diagnosis commonly used nowadays. The language, too, employed by provers in describing their symptoms has in some instances altered its significance in the course of a century.
The Emanometer of Boyd seems to confirm the necessity, or at least the advisability, of re-proving our remedies. Those who call in the aid of this instrument in prescribing for their patients will have noticed that not infrequently the Emanometer prescribes a remedy which did not suggest itself to the physician in charge of the case; nay, more, a remedy that even on subsequent consideration, does not seem indicated by the available symptoms. Such unexpected remedy, moreover, is often startlingly successful.
In like manner, the need for re-proving may explain a fact noted by those who went to Chicago to study Homoeopathy and had the privilege of examining the case-records of that master, Kent. It was seen that Dr. Kent, after very carefully working out the case by the repertory and arriving at one or two remedies, might then give the patient a remedy that did not “come out” at all. Answer by calling that intuition, but you do not explain it.
However, even if all are agreed that our remedies should be re- proved, the unfortunate doubt remains as to whether this strenuous age would be able to find time for such sustained effort as is required. A recent request initiated by the International Homoeopathic League for provers for a new remedy, met with not a single response!.
So it seems that for the present, at any rate, we shall have to continue as we are doing, and strive to perfect our knowledge of the symptom matter we possess.
And, on the whole, it does not serve us too badly.
SULPHUR IN FURUNCULOSIS. In the sulphur treatment of boils described by Herxheimer, Happel and Uhlmann (Munch. Med. Woch., September 5th, 1930) the patients are placed in chambers into which, by means of compressed air, water containing sulphur is sprayed. The water employed for this treatment is obtained from natural sulphur springs, and besides sulphur it contains numerous other minerals. The authors found that the therapeutic results of this treatment were favourable in most cases. New furuncles did not develop and the existing ones healed rapidly.
